Searching For Happiness
Everyone seems to be searching for happiness.
Here is a list of some of the places that people tell me they have looked, in order to find happiness:
Other people, a soulmate
Work, feeling proud and fulfilled
Family, a warm snug connectedness
Home, the perfect location
Recreation, exhilaration and freedom
Charity, making a difference
Religion, a higher purpose
Some say they found it once, but lost it; some say it comes and goes in mysterious ways; some say that life sings when they have it; some say that life is drudgery without it.
Some remember it as ‘the good old days’; for others it occurred all at once on a single day (when their first child was born); one man described happiness as his first visit to a circus at the age of 5; a woman became emotional recounting her first view of The Grand Canyon and her hike to its bottom.
Some defined happiness as a taste: chocolate chip cookies; grandma’s chicken soup; the first lick of an ice cream cone on a hot summer day; hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire; two straws, one soda, and a special friend.
One thing I’ve learned is that happiness is available in unlimited quantities for each of us. Its seed lives within us all. It expresses itself when we invite it to be a part of our most common of days. It hides away when we suppress it.
For me, happiness appears every time I bring out a scrabble board and have a scrabble friend or an interested student to play with. It’s that easy.
Where do you find happiness?